Kazakhstan's new monetary policy takes into account national income reduction - WB expert

"From the viewpoint of the Government, this change was caused by two events. The first one is fall in oil prices, which made Kazakhstan and many other countries immediately adjusted their currencies. The second event is the changes in the economies of Russia and China, important trade partners of Kazakhstan," Kostopoulos said.

According to him, Russian rouble's fall and economic slowdown in China made Kazakhstan launch certain measures to ensure its economic competitiveness. C.Kostopoulos noted that the new monetary policy of Kazakhstan takes into account the real decline in national income. "The National Bank has supported tenge rate for a long time, but the expectation of oil price drop made your country change this policy," he noted The exchange rate of the tenge must be much lower if we take oil prices into consideration, the WB expert says. In his opinion, free floating rate of the tenge is a good decision, because when oil prices fall, it is tenge rate that must be changed, but not market prices. The changes in structure of economy should correspond to the changes in national income, in order to be competitive, he added.